Type RTS

Inspiration

When coming up an idea of this Rustathon, I knew I wanted to make an RTS game. It's always been a favorite genre of mine but because of how difficult it is to make AI for these kind of games, I've never really attempted to make one before. But recently, I played a game called State.io which I found to be really simple. So, I decided to make something like it for this project. As for the typing portion, there's this game called Hacknet which also placed the player in a position where their main control is their keyboard. There's been rumors that the game at some point planned to have a multiplayer mode to it. This project was inspired from these rumors as well.

What it does

Type RTS is an RTS game that requires the player to type their commands rather than use their mouse or keybindings. The goal is to achieve full control of all nodes by dispatching units out of captured nodes. Every couple seconds, each node generates a unit which the player can use, but it is up to the player to balance their resources else face destruction by the opposing player.

How we built it

Type RTS was built with the macroquad game library. This library allowed me to draw basic shapes, gather user input, and manage time in the game. Beyond that, all other logical aspects were designed by me in Rust.

Challenges we ran into

Before this, I had absolutely no experience working with Rust. At most, I've read maybe 3-4 chapters of the Rust book. So, I had a lot of trouble working with the new features I haven't seen before like lifetime/ownership.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Despite great difficulty in picking up the language, I'm proud of how far I've been able to progress. The game is functional and I've managed to make the game window mostly responsive.

What we learned

Overall, I've learned a lot about Rust. Through guidance from the mentors, I've learned the do's and don't of the language, better ways to handle things than I could've come up with, and the benefits of Rust's somewhat quirky systems. In the future, I do plan to work with Rust more.

What's next for Type RTS

At the moment, I do not plan on continuing Type RTS, but I can share some of my ideas I wish I could've implemented. I was hoping to implement a path-finding system so players can input two arbitrary nodes and send units between them. I also hoped to add a factory system to add an additional way to spend units and add an encirclement system to add more tactical flavor.

Built With

• macroquad
• rust